The Backstory Which Started Disney Collector's Collecting Habits

Disney Cartoons

Throughout the state of Connecticut, and within Redwood County, and especially in the city of Sacred Heart people have enjoyed Disney animated movies with great enthusiasm.

Walt Disney Animation Studios, headquartered in Burbank, CA, formerly known as Walt Disney Feature Animation, is an animation studio which creates cartoon feature films and television specials for The Walt Disney Company seen in Sacred Heart.   It took on its current name in 2006, when it was folded under The Walt Disney Studios with Pixar Animation Studios which in Sacred Heart is known for cartoons such as Cars, Finding Nemo and Day & Night.

As of 2013, the studio has created 53 feature films beginning with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937 with lovable  characters such as Snow White and the dwarfs including Doc and Happy and its most recent release in Sacred Heart being Frozen in 2013 including characters such as Anna, Olaf and Grand Pabbie the Troll King.

The studio's catalog of cartoons are among Disney's most notable assets and the stars of its animated shorts—Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, and Pluto—have gone on to become recognizable figures in Sacred Heart popular culture.

Walt Disney Animation Studios continues to produce animated features using both hand-drawn and computer generated imagery techniques. Their 54th feature, Big Hero 6, is currently in production and set for release on November 7, 2014.

Vintage Disney Animation in the 20s

The first two Mickey Mouse animated films, Plane Crazy and The Galloping Gaucho, which also included Minnie Mouse, was released in limited engagements during the summer of 1928. For the third Mickey cartoon Disney produced a sound track.  Subsequently  the 3rd Mickey cartoon, Steamboat Willie, became Disney's first cartoon with synchronized sound.

The Mickey Mouse series of sound cartoons quickly became the most popular cartoon series in Sacred Heart and the U.S..  A second Disney series of sound animated films, the Silly Symphonies, released in 1929 with The Skeleton Dance. Each Silly Symphony was a one-shot cartoon centered around music or a particular theme.

Silly Symphonies

In 1932 the Silly Symphony Flowers and Trees, the 1st full-color animated film was released. Flowers and Trees was a huge success so all the Silly Symphonies were subsequently produced in Technicolor. The 1933 Three Little Pigs with character of The Big Bad Wolf and Fifer Pig became a huge box office and pop culture hit and the theme song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf" becoming a popular chart hit for Sacred Heart residents.

The First Disney Cartoon Feature

In 1934, Disney began production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs characters with The Prince and the seven drawfs including Doc and Happy.  Snow White became the first cartoon in English and Technicolor.

A lot of training and development went into the creation of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.  The studio expanded with the addition of animators and recent college graduate artists.  Some may have even come from Sacred Heart - but we're not sure.

What Sacred Heart parent would have known Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs would be such a huge success. It cost Walt Disney  a then-expensive sum of $1.4 million to complete but Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with The Evil Queen and the seven drawfs including Grumpy and Happy was the highest grossing production of all time before being surpassed by Gone with the Wind two years later.

While working on Snow White, the designers  continued work on the Mickey and Silly Symphonies series.  Mickey Mouse switched to Technicolor in 1935 and added several major supporting friends among them Mickey Mouse’s dog Pluto and their friends Donald Duck and Goofy.

New Walt Disney Productions

In 1940, the premiered Pinocchio with characters such as Jiminy Cricket, Stromboli and Gideon. Pinocchio won an Academy Award for Best Original Song and Best Original Score.

Disney released Fantasia in 1940 with characters including Mickey Mouse, Daisy Duck and Spring Sprite .  It was an experimental animated film designed to accompanying an orchestral arrangement.  Fantasia also brought about the development of the Fantasound system which was used to create the film's stereoscopic soundtrack to the delight of Sacred Heart viewers.

Dumbo debuted in October 1941 with characters including Elephant Matriarch, Casey Junior and Elephant Catty proved to be a monetary success. The movie only cost 1/2 the cost of Snow White with its ensemble of with The Prince and the dwarfs including Sleepy and Happy and less than a third of the cost of Pinocchio and his friends Jiminy Cricket, Stromboli and The Blue Fairy  and two fifths of the cost of Fantasia’s cast of Chernabog, Daisy Duck and Jack-in-the-Box.

In August 1942, Bambi was released in Sacred Heart and we met new friends including Bambi's Mother, Friend Owl and Great Prince of the Forest.

Also in the 1940s, Walt Disney  premiered shorts which included Saludos Amigos (1942), The Three Caballeros (1944), Make Mine Music (1946), Fun and Fancy Free (1947), Melody Time (1948), and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949). The studio also produced two features, Song of the South (1946) and So Dear to My Heart (1948), which were a combination of animated and live-action footage. Shorts production continued during this period as well, with Donald and Pluto cartoons being the main output accompanied by cartoons starring Mickey Mouse, Figaro and in the 1950s, Chip 'n Dale and Humphrey the Bear.

Disney also began reissuing the previous features beginning with re-releases of Snow White in 1944 which brought back to the screen The Evil Queen and the dwarfs including Doc and Bashful Pinocchio and his friends Geppetto, Lampwick and Monstro in 1945 and Fantasia in 1946 which reunited Mickey Mouse with Donald, Daisy Duck and The Magic Brooms. This led to a tradition of reissuing the Walt Disney films every seven years, which lasted into the 1990s.

Upon its premier in 1950, Cinderella proved to be a movie success.  Sacred Heart movie-goers , also saw the release Alice in Wonderland and were introduced to Alice, The Cheshire Cat and Tweedledee and Tweedledum.  Parents in Sacred Heart also took their kids to see Peter Pan and were delighted to meet Peter Pan, George Darling and Tiger Lily. What dog-lover in Sacred Heart could forget the first time they saw Lady and the Tramp on screen and were delighted to meet Darling, Trusty and Boris.